krankbrother: Party boys with grand designs

As someone who spends a lot of time in nightclubs in London and around the world, the older I’ve got, the more I’ve valued the effort that goes into making the clubbing experience the very best it can be. One of the most consistent and high quality nights in London is run by two brothers, Dan and Kieran Clancy AKA krankbrother.

Having started out as just a small gathering for friends and associates, it’s grown into a well-respected clubbing enterprise. With an always discerning crowd and great, sometimes unused, venues plus a spot on music policy krankbrother has become one of my favourite places to hang out. I spoke to Kieran about what they’ve been up to recently.

How’s 2012 been for you?

It’s been a great year for krankbrother. We’re really pleased with everything we’ve done in London and abroad this year, 2011 was the year that our parties really took off, and 2012 was all about continuing that momentum and growing the party, but also keeping one step ahead of other promoters and doing stuff that is interesting and different. And outside of London we’ve been involved in some amazing festivals and started some pretty special yacht parties in Ibiza.

Any personal highlights?

In terms of a clubbing moment, the best party that we’ve been to this year was a party in a temple in the jungle in Mexico, at BPM festival in January. The party is run by our friends Luca and Anthony from Audiofly, and it’s not part of the official BPM Festival. It’s a 100% not for profit event and all money goes to local charities. The venue was insanely good, a mock Mayan temple in the jungle and the crowd was great too. Not to mention that we got to see Guy Gerber, Audiofly, Damian Lazarus, Davide Squillace, Art Department and many more play to only 400 people.

In terms of our own parties – our street party in Shoreditch in June was definitely our best of the year in London. To have 2000 people dancing in the middle of a public street, for all to see and totally legally – it reinforced to us everything that’s great about the London scene right now. It took months and months of meetings and endless form filling, as well as having a personal relationship with a lot of the council members and police, but it was totally worth the work. It really was one of the parties of the year in London in our (biased) opinion.

The best parties we did abroad would have been our yacht parties. To cruise around Ibiza and across to Formentera on a 140ft yacht is not something you get to do every day. Also we enjoyed the intimacy of the yacht parties. We had people from all over the world come and it was so nice to be able to hang and party with so many fun and interesting people.

Although you have a strong following now do you still worry that you might have a poor turnout every now and then?

Luckily we haven’t had to worry about a poor turnout much recently – we’re in a great position where our parties are usually selling out in advance at the moment which is fantastic – long may it continue! But numbers through the door is always a concern for promoters, especially when there are about a million promoters in London right now and many of them putting together great line ups. So I’m sure it will be a problem for certain events down the line. We just have to make our parties unmissable.

What are the key lessons you’ve learned since you started putting parties on?

Try and go to bed the night before you are putting on a event. It gets mucky if you don’t!

What’s the best aspect of what you do? And the worst?

Getting to do lots of travelling to amazing party locations is really cool. And you meet some really interesting people. The worst part of promoting are all the things you can’t control that go wrong at events – like venues falling through last minute, wasted DJs, broken air con units, bad weather and so on.

Has anything ever gone badly wrong since you started?

So much stuff has gone wrong – but it’s how you respond to things going wrong in the run up to an event that matters.

How do you feel about the current London ’scene’?

The London scene is pretty good right now – there are some really strong promoters out there doing interesting stuff. And it’s great that it’s become such a centre for dance music – there are so many DJs, producers, agents, managers and promoters but more importantly dance music lovers who are based here, so it feels good to be at the centre of everything. But what comes with the scene, being probably as big as it’s ever been, is that there is also a lot of mediocre stuff going on too.

What can a newcomer to a krankbrother party expect?

A great venue, a very friendly crowd, fantastic production levels, forward thinking dance music and all round quality.

Where do you like to party when you’re not putting them on yourselves?

Because we use a lot of warehouses or random outdoor spaces for our parties in London, and also go to lots of friends’ parties in London, it’s quite cool to go to the odd club when we’re free. Like Watergate and Ritter Butzke in Berlin or Underground and Space in Ibiza. Or The Standard in NYC. We also just love partying during the daytime and in the sun. So give us a beach, pool, boat, field, wherever!

Who are you listening to at the moment?

In terms of producers – we’re loving stuff by Matthias Meyer, Nhar, Oliver Schories, Ame, Kruse & Nuernberg, Jimmy Edgar and Daniel Bortz at the moment. DJs wise – too many to say, there are hundreds of good DJs out there, but a few we are liking at the moment: Dixon, Daphni, Ben UFO, Bicep and of course the one and only Pan-Pot.

What do you like to do when you’re not organising parties?

I think the main thing we do when we are not organising parties is eating. We’re pretty greedy actually. We both eat out in London once or twice per day – there are so many good restaurants at the moment and affordable ones. We’d be much better off if we didn’t eat out so much. We are opening our own restaurant and bar together in Hoxton in February 2013 called “Beagle”, so most of the time outside promoting, we are working towards this goal – it’s a lot of work and we can’t wait to launch.

What were doing before DJing and promoting?

Pretty boring jobs – as soon as we saw an escape route from them we jumped ship and went full time with our parties, DJing and getting our restaurant and bar open.

When do you think you might hang your hats up and retire?

When people stop coming or if we ever stop having fun. We love what we do so we want to continue for as long as possible.

Any advice for someone considering starting an event in their hometown?